Background traffic occurs when a computing device sends and receives data-files in the background. The packets/traffic generated without the user involvement or that the user is not necessarily expecting is generally called background traffic. Emerging applications, such as social applications (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) also generate background traffic on top of the traffic that is generated with the user involvement. Background traffic is one of the classical data communication schemes characterized by the destination not expecting the data within a certain time. Examples include background delivery of E-mails, SMS, and download of databases and reception of measurement records. With regard to social media, background data includes Facebook and Twitter updates while the user is not actively using the device. Due to the social nature, background traffic generated by social applications, etc. is very frequent and has smaller packets.
Two major issues associated with background traffic are: (a) background traffic makes the device to receive/transmit this traffic when it is generated and does not allow the device to be in low power mode continuously for a long period of time, hence, consumes battery power unnecessarily, (b) background traffic makes the device to come out of the low power mode and make connectivity to the network frequently to receive/transmit the background traffic, hence, adds substantial air interface signaling overhead.
Two major problem areas include determining how to identify background traffic and how to differentiate background traffic from regular traffic.